Arrested teacher smiles for media

When the door opened Monday at the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, Stephanie Ragusa walked out wearing handcuffs and a wide grin.

"Stephanie, why the smile?" a reporter asked.

Ragusa grinned more broadly, shook her head and continued walking toward the patrol cruiser that would haul her to jail.

The schoolteacher's toothy smile -- spread across newspapers, TV and the Internet -- has become her public trademark. It is there in three booking mug shots that followed her three arrests on charges she had sex with underage boys.

"She doesn't seem like this is serious," said Karen A. Duncan, a sex assault therapist in Indianapolis who has studied women as sex offenders.

Ragusa seems to be a member of a new category of sexual offenders, Duncan said: young, attractive, professional and predatory women who target underage boys. Another in the group is Debra Lafave, the former Greco Middle School teacher who was sentenced to house arrest after pleading guilty in 2005 to having sex with a 14-year-old student.

"I think something is going on with a certain group of young women and the media attention," Duncan said. She emphasized the word "predatory" in describing them. Female sex offenders, she said, prey on teenagers' vulnerability and sexual curiosity.

Media attention seems to give them celebrity status, Duncan said, even though it is negative.

Still, she said, this behavior seems to conflict with their professional lives.

"There's an immaturity I see in these women. I don't think they see the seriousness of the situation or their behavior."

In a court hearing Tuesday, where a judge was to determine whether Ragusa should be jailed without bail pending trial, she gave short answers as the judge asked her questions.

"Do you understand there currently is no bond in your case and that's the way it's going to stay until the court rules otherwise?" Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett said.

"OK," Ragusa said, breaking into a smile. The smile lasted for the remaining moments of the hearing.

Bonnie Bucqueroux, who runs the Victims and the Media program at Michigan State University, also wondered about the desire for media attention.

"Does it spark that sort of behavior or was it there all along? I find that to be a difficult question to answer."

Deputies have said the teenager and Ragusa may have had sex 20 times or more, and it continued after he knew she had been arrested in connection with it.

If the latest charges against Ragusa are true, if she had sex with her victim even while out on bail, she is showing a compulsion typical of sex offenders, Duncan said.

When a therapist treats a sex offender, she said, the treatment is similar to therapy for addictions.

"It's the belief that somehow what they're doing isn't wrong, and there is some sort of a love interest here," Duncan said. "Love validates the behavior."

Brian Gonzalez, a Tampa defense lawyer not affiliated with Ragusa's case, said he expects Ragusa's attorney will have her evaluated by a mental health professional. Even if she is not deemed incompetent, the information could prove valuable in reducing a sentence should she be found guilty.